Subscribe to The Bugler!Our twice-monthly e-newsletter with interesting facts, discount coupons, notification of sales and events, and previews of new items.

Email

Sign up for In Step Monthly Email!An exclusive monthly email with special offers and discounts, contests, and advance notice of new products. Plus, every month we'll award a $50 gift certificate to one lucky recipient for use on any online order at ParadeStore.com.

Email

Reasons to Love the Marine Corps

"We are United States Marines, and for two and a quarter centuries we have defined the standards of courage, esprit, and military prowess."
Gen. James L. Jones, USMC (CMC); 10 November 2000

"The American Marines have it [pride], and benefit from it. They are tough, cocky, sure of themselves and their buddies. They can fight and they know it."
General Mark Clark, U.S. Army

"We stole the eagle from the air force, the anchor from the navy and the rope from the army. On the seventh day while god rested, we overran his perimeter, stole the globe and we've been running the whole show ever since."
Unknown

So they are competent, disciplined, proud, courageous, confident, and arrogant. Just ask them! Here are 50 reasons to love the Marine Corps as gathered from the Internet. We present them in honor of tomorrow's 235th birthday of the Marine Corps - November 10, 1775. Three cheers for America's oldest branch of service!!! OORAH!

1. Best haircut - hands down. You can't have a bad hair day with a high and tight. And you spend less on shampoo.

2. Civilians have to find time to go to the gym. Marines get paid to go.

3. Dress blues. They're the coolest uniforms in any military worldwide.

4. Most respect. When the Corps came back to Haiti after 60 years, an old man on the Cap-Haitian beach said, "Welcome back!"

5. Best emblem: eagle, globe and anchor (air, land, and sea).

6. Best slogans: "The Few, The Proud, The Marines" ... "We're Looking For a Few Good Men" ... "Once a Marine, always a Marine" ... "Send in the Marines" ... "Tell that to the Marines."

7. Best motto: The Latin Semper Fidelis - "Always faithful."

8. Best nicknames: "Jarhead" ... "Leatherneck" ... "Devil dog."

9. The Silent Drill Team. Just watching them ply their trade makes you want to wear dress blues.

10. You're a Marine; not a soldier or a troop.

11. The Marine Air-Ground Task Force. Marines attack by land, by air and from the sea - simultaneously.

12. The only combined arms force. You want joint-ness? The Marine Corps has been joint for decades, with its own air force, ground-pounders and navy in one.

13. Unity - every Marine is a rifleman, and everyone's a Marine: officers and enlisted.

14. No better friend, no worse enemy.

15. New uniforms. Pixel-pattern cammies? Yeah, the corps came up with that.

16. Marines do more with less, and they like it that way. "Marines can do a lot with a little and everything with nothing."

17. Nothing beats the canopy of sabers during a full dress Marine wedding.